


May You Live In Interesting Times

by depressaria



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Community: hc_bingo, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Mouth Sewn Shut, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-17
Updated: 2017-08-17
Packaged: 2018-12-16 08:03:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11824485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/depressaria/pseuds/depressaria
Summary: In Lorelei’s world, Sif was awkwardly eccentric, taking Asgardian ideals far past what Lorelei herself would deem reasonable. But to Sif, Lorelei was a sad and directionless creature, abandoned by the sister who had placed her in a world her childhood did not prepare her for, and losing out on valuable life experiences because she was too preoccupied with being contrary.On Sif and Lorelei, and what came after Lorelei's escape to Earth.





	May You Live In Interesting Times

**Author's Note:**

> For the ‘torture’ square on my hc_bingo card. (Containing both a loose interpretation of the prompt and a more traditional one.)
> 
> Warnings: violence/gore, kissing (not main pairing) under the effects of mind control

Lorelei was… frustrating.

She was not an especially complicated woman, though she liked to give the impression of it. She favored soft clothing, soft furniture, soft living. She fancied herself to be someone of high ranking, perhaps even royalty, but though she was certainly arrogant, there were occasions when her confidence was not completely unfounded. Lorelei was a woman of many talents, chief among them her mind, which was sharp as any Sif had ever known. The problem was that she lacked the will to properly utilize it.

She could be a great sorceress, perhaps among the greatest Asgard had known in generations, but she disliked studying and hard work, and was content to just barely scratch the surface of what her considerable talents could enable her to learn.

Those talents would also serve her well as a bard, for she possessed a naturally captivating manner of speaking and a clear and pleasing singing voice; whenever battlesongs were sung, Lorelei’s voice rose sweet and lovely above others’. And yet she abandoned that path as well, singing only often enough to keep her voice from becoming coarse with disuse, and preferring as well to tell tales rarely, with her natural affinity for them unmodified by lessons. 

Though her true strengths lay with her mind, she was also not an ungifted swordswoman, and were she to train as Sif trained, she could be a warrior fine as any other. Instead she developed only enough skill to defend herself, and then abandoned training as she abandoned every other pursuit. 

“I want to be free to do as I please,” she told Sif, whenever Sif remarked upon her lack of commitment. Usually she said it with a most impish grin, whilst lolling about on a chaise, or leaning artfully again a wall, and when she said it that way Sif usually commented, only half in jest, that it was a wonder that she was apparently the only one who could see through Lorelei’s artifice.

Privately, Sif thought that to be free one must put in the work, but perhaps things were different for those who were naturally gifted.

Unlike Thor and Loki, who were more talented than Lorelei by far but limited in their endeavors by their commitments to throne and family, Lorelei was not even tied down by her commitments to her sister, for Amora had long been absent from Asgard. Her departure left something of a stain on the family name, which was generally considered to be a shame, as Amora had only recently managed to establish herself and her sister—neither of whom were nobles born—as courtiers. Lorelei retained her position, but her advancement through the ranks of social standing slowed nearly to a halt.

Even in her courtier duties she was capricious, appearing as little as she could get away with. One would think that that task, at least, would suit her; it required measured socialization and carefully chosen words, but little effort besides that, and it afforded one many excuses to attend parties and rub shoulders with one’s betters. Sif found it all to be terminally boring, but Lorelei, when she bothered to show up, seemed to delight in it. When slacking off from her other obligations, Lorelei seemed to do nothing but carefully socialize, yet when socialization was the obligations, she disdained it as she disdained all of her duties.

Sif thought that she found Lorelei so frustrating because they were polar opposites—Sif being so driven to prove herself and so hard-working in the pursuit of her ambitions despite having little innate talent, and Lorelei being so frivolous and lazy despite possessing great natural talent. 

~*~*~*~

They had never been the closest of friends, but as youths had seen as much of each other and trained with each other as often as any other youths in Asgard saw each other. It was when they grew older that they drifted away, Sif dedicating herself to proving herself as a warrior, while Lorelei gravitated towards the parts of being a courtier that Sif most deeply despised. 

In the end, it was only at those parties that Sif so hated that they seemed to meet, and occasionally at the baths, and occasionally in the library, when Sif pulled the short straw and ended up having to research something that she and the Warriors Three planned to hunt. 

Yet though they soon lived in two almost entirely different worlds—Lorelei with her half-hearted magical studies and empty friendships, and Sif with her punishingly intense weapons training and battle-forged friendships—Lorelei always greeted her as a friend, devious though her friendly overtures often were, and Sif found herself reacting in kind, though normally she loathed anything that even smelled vaguely duplicitous. It was all she could do to tolerate Loki’s presence on the hunting trips she took with Thor and the Warriors Three, and by all accounts he actually made an effort to tone himself down on those trips. 

When she took the time to ruminate on their acquaintanceship, she usually concluded that it was because she pitied Lorelei, and Lorelei found it entertaining to needle her. In Lorelei’s world, Sif was awkwardly eccentric, taking Asgardian ideals far past what Lorelei herself would deem reasonable. But to Sif, Lorelei was a sad and directionless creature, abandoned by the sister who had placed her in a world her childhood did not prepare her for, and losing out on valuable life experiences because she was too preoccupied with being contrary. 

Neither had the kindest opinion of the other, which was possibly why it worked. There were plenty of courtiers who still judged Sif for her career choice and believed that she had only become a warrior as part of some gambit, and plenty of warriors and sorcerers who thought Lorelei lazy and overindulged. Yet in this one isolated instance, their feelings of mild disdain were totally reciprocated, and thus lacked the bite of the disdain of others. 

Frustrated as she often was by Lorelei’s behavior, she thought that her life would be duller without Lorelei as an occasional fixture in it. 

~*~*~*~

The whole incident over her hair was one of the more humiliating ones she had had to endure.

It combined the things in life which most embarrassed her: being the center of attention, having her appearance scrutinized, having others fight her battles for her, and receiving gifts. She spent the next few days either hiding in her quarters or stalking about at her full height, daring anyone to make a mocking comment about her beauty.

One day she started when someone grabbed her hair, but when she turned, sword half-unsheathed, she found that it was only Lorelei, wearing a smile and a gossamer-thin gown, her own hair falling loose and soft about her face. She was running her fingers delicately through the ends of Sif’s newly-dark ponytail, and her expression was so strange that Sif put her sword back, though her hand remained on the hilt. 

“It suits you, Lady Sif,” Lorelei said. 

“It will take some getting used to,” Sif said. That was the kind way of putting it. She had never thought herself vain, yet she still found herself disturbed by the changes she saw in her reflection. To go from long to short was startling, but she had been beginning to find that her hair was getting in the way anyways, and had quickly grown used to the change. For it to be long again so soon after she resigned herself to short hair, and for the color to be so drastically changed as well, was somewhat disconcerting. The night she received it she tried to cut it, but it grew back to its original length the instant she put down the blade. She supposed that it was inevitable that the color would prove as impossible to change as the length. It seemed unfair that she should suffer the consequences of one of Loki’s double-edged apologies when she never asked for recompense in the first place. She had not sought pity or vengeance for Loki’s prank, and she despised that, because she was a woman and because she was friends with Thor, that fact was being disputed. It would not surprise her if Loki, knowing that she would not care about losing her hair, had planned for it to happen this way all along. 

Lorelei took a step closer and said, in a low voice, as if conferring a most treacherous secret, “Thor also thinks it suits you.”

That gave her pause. She and Thor had been friends since childhood, and while she had never held more than a passing fancy for him, rumors that they were secretly entangled had persisted ever since she began hunting with him and the Warriors Three. She did not, of course, presume to know Thor’s heart, but she did not believe he held any such feelings for her either. Finally, she settled on saying, “It seems that everyone has an opinion.”

“One in your position should be more aware of others’ opinions,” Lorelei said. She was still standing too close, eyes lingering overlong on Sif’s face, and it was becoming uncomfortable.

Sif was about to take a step back when Lorelei surged forwards. For one startled moment she thought that Lorelei planned to kiss her, but Lorelei stopped short of that. Her fingers brushed a stray strand of hair behind Sif’s ear, and her mouth was so close to Sif’s face that Sif could kiss her by simply turning her head.

Then Lorelei stepped back, and said, “There was a leaf in your hair.” She held out said leaf for inspection.

Feeling foolish, Sif reached out to take the leaf. Lorelei pressed it into her hand, letting the contact linger longer than seemed strictly necessary, then abruptly turned and left. 

“It really does suit you,” she called over her shoulder as she flounced away, leaving Sif standing there holding the leaf and feeling confused, but somehow less embarrassed than before their conversation.

Lorelei obtained, after the incident with Brokk and Eitri, a position in Loki’s camarilla. The two got along only marginally better than Sif and Loki did, but her burgeoning powers of persuasion were something he likely could not abide not allying himself with, and so for the moment they pretended to be better friends than they actually were.

There were a great many reasons to distrust the alliance, recent events chief among them, but Sif would admit that a small part of her would take pleasure in seeing the Liesmith laid low by Lorelei’s abilities. She would not wish to see him goaded into action that way, but a few days of trailing, lovesick, after some lowborn courtier would give him a healthy few years’ worth of embarrassment, and would go a long way towards soothing Sif’s own wounded pride.

Lorelei never did use her abilities on him, but whether it was due to some sense of loyalty or integrity or simply a case of his skills in sorcery being that much more developed than her own, none but Lorelei knew. She was not Sif’s lapdog any more than she was Loki’s, and Sif would not ask it of her besides. Amusing as it might be at first, she thinks that in the end she would think less of Lorelei for it.

~*~*~*~

On the day of Thor’s birthday celebration, Lorelei whisked Sif away to her quarters, insisting that they prepare for and attend the party together. She insisted upon dressing her hair (fingernails scraping slightly too hard against Sif’s scalp as she did so), and on helping her to put on her ceremonial armor, and on lending her (as if Sif would ask!) some of the strong-smelling perfumed oils she had a sizable collection of in her quarters. 

When Sif finally declared she’d had enough and moved to leave the room, Lorelei caught her by the elbow. 

“What is it now?” Sif asked, amused despite herself. “Another leaf in my hair?” 

Lorelei just pulled her into a kiss. The kiss was neither soft nor violent; if anything, it felt somehow inexorable. At first glance, one might think Lorelei, with her soft features and love of impractical clothing, to be a yielding and pliant paramour, but she kissed with utter and implacable confidence. It was not the off-putting confidence of a lush already deep in his cups, or of a warrior seeking to maintain momentum even after all his enemies were gone. To Sif, who loathed braggarts and milksops in equal measure, it was intoxicating. It took her a moment to catch up, but when she did, she pulled Lorelei to her, crushing her to her chest, and felt Lorelei smile against her mouth. 

Just as suddenly as it had started, it was over, and Lorelei was half-dragging Sif by the elbow into the dining hall where the party was being held. Sif only hoped that the warmth she felt in her face was not visible, and that if it was, it would be mistaken for the result of drink or of the excitement of the festivities. 

It was that night, of course, that Amora chose to return. 

The celebration was well underway by the time she arrived, and so her entrance into the dining hall was met with first mild curiosity and annoyance, then interest once people began to recognize her. Some continued as they were before her arrival, and some murmured to each other as she passed through the crowd, but Lorelei, who usually laughed at such transparent attempts to make oneself interesting, was not only silent but still and tense. Her fingers were actually leaving dents in her goblet, and when Sif placed a hand on her elbow, she didn’t even acknowledge it. 

Sif thought that a quiet exit might have been prudent even if it was cowardly, but to her credit, Lorelei held firm, continuing to stand next to Sif as Amora made her rounds. By the time Amora made her way over to them, Lorelei had mostly composed herself, though there was an air about her of a string pulled past its limits, so that it was beginning to fray. 

Amora greeted Lorelei in sickly sweet tones. When she embraced her, Lorelei returned the embrace, but Sif could see the tension in her shoulders just by looking at her. 

“Your absence from court these past years did not go unnoticed,” Sif said by way of greeting. “That should please you.” 

Amora turned to her with a smile that, at first glance, appeared genuine. But upon closer inspection, Sif saw that though Amora’s eyes glittered with emotion, that emotion had nothing to do with the warmth the smile was meant to imply. “The suffering of Asgard never pleases me, Lady Sif,” she said, and held her hand out limply, as if she was a woman as distinguished in rank as Frigga and Sif was a lowborn warrior. 

It was her first instinct to simply ignore the gesture—about the only intricacy of court she had retained from her adolescent studies was that silence was usually the best response to blatantly unbecoming behavior—but she could feel Lorelei burning with embarrassment next to her, and so with an overly formal bow she took Amora’s hand and pressed her lips to the back of it. 

“The years have improved your manners,” Amora said, and this time the conflict in her expression was easy to read. She was taken aback that Sif had called her bluff, but proud that the result was a scene with herself at the center. 

“Your own remain without compare.” She turned to Lorelei, whose fixed smile was beginning to look painful, and added, “Am I mistaken, or have we not yet paid our respects to the host? Volstagg will be hurt.” 

Something churned behind Lorelei’s eyes, but the shadow passed, and her smile relaxed into something more natural. “Then we must rectify the matter immediately.” She readily took the elbow that Sif offered her, and the two left Amora to continue making her own rounds. 

Sif wanted to ask a great many things of Lorelei. If she was all right, for one, and possibly also why she had reacted the way she did, and what exactly Amora’s angle was. It was not difficult to see that Amora, like her sister, sought power and status in Asgard, but it seemed that she had shot herself in the foot long ago with her departure. It would be many decades before she was fully trusted again. Why she had chosen now to return was a vital piece of information, though none needed to know that Sif was curious not only for Asgard’s sake, but for Lorelei’s. 

But neither Sif nor Lorelei were the sort to respond well to questions regarding their emotional wellbeing. So Sif held her tongue, and devoted her energy to making the party as enjoyable as possible for Lorelei. 

Her efforts seemed to pay off. By the end of the evening, all traces of the stiff and gray-faced Lorelei from earlier had vanished, replaced by Lorelei in perfect form. At the top of her game, Lorelei was magnetic and effervescent; she drank and talked and laughed and danced, dragging Sif from one cluster of tipsy courtiers to the next. When it came time to sing songs of Thor’s glory, Lorelei volunteered to perform a solo, and (with mannerisms and voice sweet as if she were singing a love song) she climbed up onto a table and sang one so tawdry that by the end of it the drunkest of the revelers were laughing and red-faced, and even Sif was smiling into her cup, her neck warm. 

Of course, Amora cheered loudest of all when the song was over, and draped her arm heavily over Lorelei’s shoulder when Lorelei hopped down off of the table. 

The sisters managed to avoid Sif for the last few hours of the party. Her last glimpse was of their backs as she left, Lorelei’s diaphanous blue gown swallowed up by Amora’s heavy green velvet robe, her hair looking wispy and almost mousy and faded next to Amora’s.

~*~*~*~

After the party, Lorelei stopped speaking to her.

Instead, she found companionship with Haldor. Haldor and Sif had parted ways several decades before, having agreed that they enjoyed each other’s company but that they had no future together. Their parting had been amicable enough, but once he began spending time with Lorelei, he became bitter and spiteful, incapable of holding a friendly conversation without singing Lorelei’s praises by putting Sif down. 

Sif did not consider herself to be thin-skinned, and in fact prided herself on her ability to sidestep the drama that was usually a normal part of a courtier’s life. But in this case, she found herself feeling slightly hurt—though her feelings of hurt were, she thought, eclipsed by her suspicions that something was going on.

In light of her suspicions that something was not quite right, it should not have come as a surprise when she awakened one morning to find Haldor’s blade at her throat and his empty eyes staring down at her. But it did.

What surprised her most was that, though his stance was stiff and unbalanced and she could have easily dispatched him with the sword she kept under her pillow or the knife she kept hidden in her clothing, she instead followed his commands to get up, and let him herd her into the throne room without a word of protest. Absurdly, her thoughts kept returning to how cold the floor was beneath her feet, rather than to the blade pressed against the small of her back. 

She was not the only one who’d been brought to the throne room. The Warriors Three were present, as were Thor and Frigga, though Loki was conspicuously absent and Odin still lay in the Odinsleep. Most of the palace guards appeared to have been placed under the same thrall that Haldor had; one stood stiffly behind each captive, and each captive had a weapon pressed against their back. 

It was not long before Amora and Lorelei showed themselves, both wearing their finest clothing and most beatific smiles. The gesture was transparent; the citizens they had assembled were, of course, in their nightclothes. Even Frigga looked small and almost common in her linen tunic, her hair simply braided, her face pale and lined with both fatigue and worry.

“Whatever trickery this is, it will fail you in the end,” Sif said to Lorelei, before either sister could begin on whatever grandiose speech they’d had planned.

Lorelei’s smile widened. “But I have already won.” She called for Haldor, who was smiling euphorically as he left his post behind Sif and walked to her side. “Haldor, tell Lady Sif that you consider her weak-willed.” 

Haldor complied. 

“Tell her she is pathetic. That she has not thought for herself even once in her life. That she may prostrate herself before her betters her entire life, and still never receive an ounce of genuine affection. That her friends love her for her loyalty and nothing more. That you loved her only for her body.” 

Again he complied.

“He is under your thrall,” Sif said. “Why should it upset me to hear him parrot your words? He does not even know what he says.” 

“This does not upset you?” Still smiling broadly, Lorelei pulled Haldor to her and kissed him deeply and obscenely. 

“Stop this,” Thor interrupted. “Take the throne or do not. What pleasure can it bring you to torture your friend?”

Lorelei did not respond, but instead walked slowly over to Thor, the smile on her face changing to something more predatory. Her fingertips brushed his cheek and her mouth opened to say something and—

Sif tackled her, knocking her to the ground so soundly that the back of her head bounced off of the tiled flooring. Haldor tried to interfere, but Sif shoved him away and continued grappling with Lorelei, who was putting up a fight but was not nearly skilled enough to dislodge a truly roused Sif. 

Chaos broke out in the throne room, then. The guards who had been set upon the captives had clearly not been given orders as to what to do in the event that something went south, so they all just stared mutely as most of the captives turned and pulled the blades from their hands. Lorelei kept trying to break away long enough to give another command to her thralls, but Sif put that to a stop by grabbing her by the throat and slamming her head into the floor again.

It was not until Amora had vanished, the guards were coming back to themselves, and Lorelei was half-conscious and had given up trying to speak, that Sif realized what had happened to Haldor. 

He must have fallen on his sword when Sif shoved him away. By the time anyone realized what had happened, he was long gone.

Thor, perhaps feeling guilty for the part he had inadvertently played, told her that it was not her fault. That no one would ever really know what had happened in all of the confusion after she had attacked Lorelei. But Sif knew whose hand it had been that shoved him out of her way and onto his sword, and whose actions had caused the chaos that led to his injuries going unnoticed, and whose interest in him had caused Lorelei to target him. 

~*~*~*~

Sif told herself that she was only upset with herself, that anyone would be angry at their own naïvety. But the truth of the matter was that Lorelei’s betrayal stung. They had never, in sincerity, called each other friend, nor had they been allies, but Sif had thought her to be, at the end of the day, on the side of Asgard, and she had thought herself and Lorelei to be close, even if their burgeoning romance had been cut down before it began, and even if they could not always call what they had a friendship.

There was little comfort in licking her wounds in private; sulking had never eased her pain, and it was unproductive besides. Though Lorelei had been detained, her powers were such that, so long as she was capable of speaking, they could not guarantee that she would not escape. Sif volunteered to guard her cell in the meantime. 

At times Lorelei was sullen and silent, and at other times she stood perilously close to the barrier that kept her from the rest of the world, whispering, in a voice still thin and hoarse due to Sif’s actions the night of the attempted coup, whatever she thought might get Sif to set her free. Sometimes she wept. Sometimes the tears were real. 

Sif was not swayed. She knew her own weaknesses; she was a creature of loyalty and habit, both attributes that could easily be exploited, but her grudges ran deep and true, and this one was further strengthened by its newness.

Lorelei sometimes retreated to the bed in her cell and lay there with her face pressed into the pillow, her hair cascading around her and the fingertips of one hand trailing the floor, but it was a reprieve for neither of them. 

Whatever she did, she was still caged, and Sif still had to keep watch.

~*~*~*~

The real reprieve came when Frigga entered the dungeons with a golden collar, holding it before her as if she were presenting a crown instead of a shackle. 

Sif had to hold Lorelei still while Frigga closed the collar about her neck. She fought with all her old strength, as if she had not spent the past month in a cell refusing food and drink, losing all pretenses of cunning in favor of shrieking and kicking wildly. At one point she wrenched one hand free of Sif’s grip and raked her nails down Frigga’s arm, but though blood ran freely from the wounds, Frigga did not pause in her task. 

Frigga did not announce when she had completed the enchantment; she did not need to. Lorelei’s mouth snapped shut as if someone had grabbed her jaw and wrenched her mouth closed, cutting her off mid-shriek. 

The effect was actually most unnerving. Lorelei’s chest was rising and falling rapidly, but her gasping breaths were completely silent, and the rest of her had gone limp and heavy. 

What most bothered Sif was that something behind Lorelei’s eyes seemed to snap shut, too. Gone were the tears, gone was the resentment, gone was the fury, gone was the despair. There was only an almost empty torpor, a sense that the reality of what had happened had not yet sunk in, and that it would only be later—perhaps moments, perhaps decades—that the true horror of what had been done to her would sink in.

There was nothing left to do but leave her like that. They left the cell, Frigga solemn and Sif numb.

“How long will the enchantment last?” Sif asked as they left the dungeon.

Frigga regarded her gravely. “How long do you wish it to last?” 

With Frigga, skirting around the truth to avoid making either of them uncomfortable seemed unfathomable. “I am not entirely certain,” Sif said. “Forever, perhaps.” When Frigga’s face almost imperceptibly darkened, Sif added, “You disapprove?”

“This punishment is necessary, but it is also the cruelest thing we could have done to her. To be rendered silent must be unimaginably tortuous for her, and she may be imprisoned indefinitely, depending on whether or not she shows a sincere willingness to reform.”

“She betrayed Asgard,” Sif said. 

“Even traitors deserve to be treated with compassion. We have just locked that woman into her worst nightmare. I do not intend to throw away the key.” 

Frigga turned into the royal wing, and Sif was left standing alone, feeling foolish and callous. Of course she did not wish Lorelei an eternity of torture. Of course she hoped that one day she would atone for her actions. 

But a few centuries couldn’t hurt. 

~*~*~*~

Centuries passed, and Sif let herself move on. 

She adventured throughout the Nine Realms with Thor and the Warriors Three, and sang songs of their exploits, and took blows meant for them, and bound their wounds when they took blows meant for her, and drank, and was merry, for her friends’ sake if not for her own. 

As she had little cause to visit Asgard’s dungeons—Thor’s exploits generally not involving prisoners—she only rarely thought of Lorelei. When she did think of her, it was during quiet moments on her adventures. Once because a barmaid with Lorelei’s hair accidentally brushed their fingertips together when passing her a flagon of mead, once because a maiden on Vanir laughed the same way she did (but kissed less hungrily), once when Frigga appeared at a feast wearing a golden choker reminiscent of the one silencing Lorelei. 

It was not her duty to check on prisoners or decide if they were ready for redemption, and she would not wish to carry that burden. But sometimes she wondered how Lorelei was doing. If the centuries of punishment had changed her for the better, or if she had fallen deeper into her ways. 

All the wondering did little good when she discovered that, during the dark elves’ attack on Asgard, Lorelei had escaped. 

Odin assigned her to retrieve Lorelei, but had he not, she would have volunteered.

~*~*~*~

She told Lorelei that her heart had no place in her mission to recapture her. It was true and it wasn’t. 

Six hundred years was a fraction of their long lifespans, but it was still a long time. It was certainly plenty of time for old wounds to knit over, and for Sif to look at the situation with a more objective eye. 

Lorelei said that she was the same after all their years apart, and that part at least was true. Everyone changes with the years, but compared to Lorelei, Sif had remained wholly static. Lorelei’s years in the cage, in complete silence, deprived of the one thing that had always been her weapon and her comfort, seemed to have driven her slightly mad. She behaved more erratically than she once did, seeking more and more and more, with no subtlety or patience. She did not even seem to take any hedonistic joy in what she was doing, seemingly acting out of fear and desperation. 

When she begged Sif to kill her rather than bring her back to Asgard, Sif desperately wanted to acquiesce. 

Not because she wanted Lorelei dead, though once she would have been happy to see her so. Rather, it was because she felt pity and compassion for Lorelei, to an extent she had not felt either emotion in a long time. She looked so pathetic, mundane and ridiculous in her Midgardian clothing, her hair spilled out over the industrial-looking flooring of S.H.I.E.L.D’s flying boat, her eyes brimming with tears. Lorelei’s deceptions always seemed to have a seed of truth to them. Add that to the fact that she had seen some impressive acting over the years, courtesy of the Liesmith, and she did not believe that Lorelei was feigning the emotions in her eyes when Sif placed the collar on her. Even if she was exaggerating for effect, Sif had no other option but to believe that Lorelei was genuine in her desire to die before being imprisoned again, that she truly was that frightened of it.

The guilt was compounded by the fact that Sif herself would prefer death to Lorelei’s fate.

But her king did not demand Lorelei’s death.

~*~*~*~

Odin sentenced her to have her mouth sewn shut. 

Lorelei, who had lapsed into a numb silence on the way back to Asgard, began to fight all over again at that, all the way to the cell in the dungeons where the punishment would be undergone. 

Sif had to remove the collar in order to complete the sentence, and the second she undid it, Lorelei began talking.

“Your king is not who he seems,” she said, the words spilling out rapidly, almost panickedly. Her voice was rough with disuse and emotion. “Odin would never order this, Sif; you know that he wouldn’t.”

It was true that it seemed out of character. The punishment was an archaic one, once used during the interrogation of traitors in order to soften their resolve, and among the royal family’s inner circle it was common knowledge that Odin found it distasteful. Sif herself was no proponent of it. And yet Lorelei’s crimes were such that Sif could accept it, if her lord deemed it necessary. The punishment, cruel through it was, seemed to fit the crime. 

“It is only for two weeks,” Sif said as she readied the needle. In the past, a dull needle would be used, but none needed to know that Sif chose the sharpest she could find.

Lorelei flinched violently at the first press of the needle anyways. Sif could not blame her; though this was far from the most blood she had seen, and not the first time she had borne the burden of playing torturer, it was still difficult to watch the needle pierce the soft skin around Lorelei’s mouth and push up through her lips, and harder still to be the one responsible.

Sif focused instead on the way the material soaked up the blood as she pulled it through, the way the damp red thread sat taut against Lorelei’s already swollen and bruising lips. Tried not to look up at her eyes (which were wet and accusatory, pupils blown), tried to ignore the way Lorelei was so tense she was trembling.

It was done quickly, as most of Sif’s tasks were, but by the time she knotted the thread at the opposite corner of Lorelei’s mouth she felt exhausted, as if the deed had taken hours. 

Lorelei stared at her, eyes furious and hurt, as if she had been the one who betrayed Asgard. Sif felt her gaze burning against the back of her head long after she left the cell. 

~*~*~*~

Sif was not ordered to remove the stitches once the two weeks were up, but she felt it was her responsibility to volunteer for the duty. 

What she found when she ventured into the dungeons was worse than she had expected. 

The thread had been enchanted so that it could not be removed by the prisoner it was used on, but Lorelei had clearly torn at the stitches anyways; there was too much blood to think otherwise, and if infection had not already begun to set in, it soon would. 

There was still resentment enough in Lorelei’s eyes that Sif was not overly concerned for her sanity, but it was still disturbing the way she did not pull away when Sif knelt next to her and, as gently as she could and touching Lorelei herself as little as possible, began removing the thread. 

It somehow looked more gruesome once the thread was gone. The wounds were raw and inflamed, bruising livid against ashen skin. Her eyes were overly bright, and Sif suspected that it was half with tears and half with fever. 

“I’ll fetch a healer,” Sif told her. “You require treatment.”

But when she stood, Lorelei’s hand shot out and latched onto her wrist with an iron grip. “I will see no one but you,” she said, her voice rough and low. 

Sif regarded her for a long moment. Lorelei was a practiced liar and actress, but for once Sif saw no artifice in her eyes. If Lorelei’s intention was to be duplicitous, there were few angles she could work. Escape was beyond her at this point, so either she genuinely wanted Sif to tend to her wounds, or she wanted Sif to do so in order to make her feel guilty. Neither possibility daunted Sif. She already felt guilty for what she had done, and if what Lorelei was seeking was simply a connection, it was no burden to give it to her. 

“I will have to leave to get supplies,” she finally said. 

Lorelei nodded, but did not let go. Sif pried her fingers off of her wrist as gently as she could, and tried not to notice the way Lorelei watched her leave. 

When she returned, Lorelei was in the same position she had left her in; curled on the floor by her bed, over-bright eyes wide and fixed on the door. 

Sif was no healer, but one did not become a great warrior by knowing nothing of dressing wounds. It was with unskilled but not unkind hands that she washed the blood from Lorelei’s face, and applied ointments for pain and infection, and brewed a simple tincture against fever. 

“Have you figured it out yet?” Lorelei asked when she was done. She still looked ill, but seemed significantly calmer; her eyes had lost their slightly lunatic gleam, and she had migrated from the floor onto the bed. “Who your king is.” 

“You’re ill and paranoid,” Sif said firmly. 

“I suppose you’ll figure it out in the end. Poor Sif, always doomed to be a blunt instrument. Sometimes I forget just how dull you really are.”

When Sif leaned in to put the collar back on, Lorelei did not resist. 

“Consider which of us is imprisoned, Lorelei,” Sif said as she left the cell. 

~*~*~*~

When all was said and done, Sif visited Lorelei once more.

Lorelei looked much the same as she had the last time Sif saw her, save that instead of sitting curled pathetically on her bed, she was sitting at the small table in her cell, reading. 

“I came to say you were right,” Sif told her. “It was my duty to recapture you, but it was also my duty to use my head. I did a disservice to Asgard, and to myself, and to you.” 

Lorelei looked up from her book, then, and regarded Sif for what felt like an uncomfortably long time. Then she ducked her head, and her shoulders shook, and for a moment Sif thought that she had begun weeping, but she soon realized that she was laughing. Not the healthy laughter of long-held tension released, or even the laughter that follows an old scheme blooming finally into fruition. It was alarming, borderline hysterical, and somewhat disturbing to watch; the collar swallowed up each peal of it so that she looked more like she was having some sort of fit than that she was laughing. Which was, perhaps, not all that far off from the truth. 

When the last of her laughter had died off and she had finished wiping tears from her face, she procured a sheaf of papers and wrote out a message, which she then handed to Sif. 

She was asking whether or not there would be an appeal now that the rightful king had been restored. Though of course she worded it somewhat more colorfully. 

Sif handed the paper back to her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I raised the issue with Odin and he was informed of what had been done, but because your initial sentencing was legitimate, and in light of your escape attempt, he said he did not intend to grant an appeal.”

Lorelei smiled coldly and crumpled the paper, hand clenched so tightly about it that her knuckles had gone white. She retreated to the bed, smile fading so that her face was unusually still, even her eyes flat and dull. 

Not knowing what else to say or do, Sif sat next to her on the bed and, after a moment of hesitation, placed a hand on her shoulder. 

Lorelei did not pull away.


End file.
